Talks today on dispute over unloading ship

Zhen Hua sits at the Port of Oakland at Pier 7 in Oakland, Calif. on Sunday, December 28, 2008.

Zhen Hua sits at the Port of Oakland at Pier 7 in Oakland, Calif. on Sunday, December 28, 2008.

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

Image
1of/8

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 8

Zhen Hua sits at the Port of Oakland at Pier 7 in Oakland, Calif. on Sunday, December 28, 2008.

Zhen Hua sits at the Port of Oakland at Pier 7 in Oakland, Calif. on Sunday, December 28, 2008.

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

Talks today on dispute over unloading ship

1 / 8

Back to Gallery

State transportation officials and the contractor hired to build the Bay Bridge's new eastern span called a meeting for this morning with picketing longshore workers, hoping to resolve a tense standoff over a Chinese cargo ship full of steel parts for the bridge.

The ship, the Zhen Hua, sat idle Sunday at Pier 7 at the Port of Oakland, two days after it docked and was thrust into a union turf war over who should unload it. The longshore workers said they had a right to the job and that two other unions should not have been hired.

The impasse has stalled a key phase of the $1.4 billion construction of a single-tower suspension span and may set back the timetable for completion of a project already dogged by controversy, delays and cost hikes.

Oakland officials, including Acting City Administrator Dan Lindheim and representatives of Mayor Ron Dellums, spoke informally Sunday to the parties in the dispute in an effort to make sure that it did not spark confrontations or disrupt other operations at the West Coast's third-busiest seaport.

Longshore workers were invited to a meeting at 9 a.m. today with Caltrans and the contractor, a joint venture between American Bridge and Fluor Corp.

The union agreed to temporarily stop picketing outside the gate to Pier 7 and was promised that the ship would not be unloaded without a deal.

"We hope to resolve it" in the meeting, said Bart Ney, a Caltrans spokesman. "We want to sit down and work out a mutual agreement."

"Hopefully we're going to get through this," Mackay said. "But at a moment's notice, we have to be ready" to return.

The complicated feud is taking place at a pier Caltrans is leasing from the port during construction of the bridge, which is due to be completed around 2013 and will replace a span that is vulnerable to earthquakes.

In the past, the bridge contractor had unloaded steel parts in San Francisco before barging or trucking them to the job site.

For the current job, the contractor hired members of two unions, representing iron workers and operating engineers, who tied the ship to the pier Friday afternoon. But work was halted when the longshore workers cried foul, saying they had an exclusive right to unload such vessels at the Port of Oakland.

Several dozens of those members picketed Sunday on an access road outside the gate to Pier 7 on Burma Road and vowed to keep up a 24-hour-a-day vigil, not letting any other workers get in.

Mackay said he believed the state and its contractor tried to sneak the ship into port on the day after Christmas to get around the longshore workers, who are more expensive. But he said he and others had been tracking the vessel since Dec. 23, before it reached San Francisco Bay.

Ney, the Caltrans spokesman, said his agency had been surprised by the workers' anger. He said Pier 7 is a construction site for the bridge project, and that the iron workers and operating engineers had been designated to do bridge construction work. Longshore workers, he said, had jurisdiction over commercial cargo.

"I don't know how you sneak in a ship that large," Ney said of Mackay's accusation. "I was here when the ship came in and the whistle shook my desk."

American Bridge's project director, Michael Flowers, did not return a call seeking comment.

Pete Figueiredo, a district representative for Operating Engineers Local Union No. 3, said his members were also caught off guard by the actions of the longshore workers.

"This is a project that's been going on for the past five years," he said. "There have never been any issues before now."

Sharon Cornu, executive officer of the Alameda Labor Council, called the dispute a "very complicated situation with a great deal of history to it." She said each of the unions claimed jurisdiction over certain locations and types of work, but she declined to discuss what rules might apply at Pier 7.

Lindheim, the Oakland administrator, said he did not want the standoff to escalate. "We're closely monitoring it," he said, "and trying to make sure bad stuff doesn't happen."